Remediation of Cr(VI) from chromium slag by biocementation

Here we demonstrate a calcifying ureolytic bacterium Bacillus sp. CS8 for the bioremediation of chromate (Cr(VI)) from chromium slag based on microbially induced calcite precipitation (MICP). A consolidated structure like bricks was prepared from chromium slags using bacterial cells, and five stage Cr(VI) sequential extraction was carried out to know their distribution pattern. Cr(VI) mobility was found to significantly be decreased in the exchangeable fraction of Cr slag and subsequently, the Cr(VI) concentration was markedly increased in carbonated fraction after bioremediation. It was found that such Cr slag bricks developed high compressive strength with low permeability. Further, leaching behavior of Cr(VI) in the Cr slag was studied by column tests and remarkable decrease in Cr(VI) concentration was noticed after bioremediation. Cr slags from columns were characterized by SEM–EDS confirming MICP process in bioremediation. The incorporation of Cr(VI) into the calcite surface forms a strong complex that leads to obstruction in Cr(VI) release into the environment. As China is facing chromium slag accidents at the regular time intervals, the technology discussed in the present study promises to provide effective and economical treatment of such sites across the country, however, it can be used globally.     

Contamination of polychlorinated biphenyls and organochlorine pesticides in breast milk in Korea: Time-course variation,influencing factors,and exposure assessment

Breast milk is a noninvasive specimen to assess maternal and infant exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and organochlorine pesticides (OCPs). In this study, 206 breast milk samples were collected from 87 participants during lactation, at <7, 15, 30, or 90 days postpartum in four cities in Korea. The total concentrations of PCBs (ΣPCB) and OCPs (ΣOCP) ranged from <LOQ to 84.0 (median: 12.1) ng g⁻¹ lipid weight and from <LOQ to 559 (median: 144) ng g⁻¹ lipid weight, respectively. The residue levels of these contaminants measured in our study were relatively lower than those reported for European, African and Asian populations. Within a month postpartum typically after day seven the levels of ΣPCB and ΣOCP significantly increased. Some OCP compounds were correlated with maternal age, BMI, parity, and delivery mode. Certain types of dietary habits such as seafood and noodle consumption were significantly associated with ΣPCB and ΣOCP. The estimated daily intakes (EDIs) of ΣPCB and ΣOCP were 45.2–127 ng kg⁻¹ bw day⁻¹ and 625–1259 ng kg⁻¹ bw day⁻¹ during lactation, respectively, which are lower than the threshold values proposed by the US EPA and Health Canada. The exposure of Korean infants to chlordanes via breast milk had a potential health risk which deserves further investigation.     

Transgenic poplar trees expressing yeast cadmium factor 1 exhibit the characteristics necessary for the phytoremediation of mine tailing soil

Genetic engineering of plants for phytoremediation is thought to be possible based on results using model plants expressing genes involved in heavy metal resistance, which improve the plant’s tolerance of heavy metals and accumulation capacity. The next step of progress in this technology requires the genetic engineering of plants that produce large amounts of biomass and the testing of these transgenic plants in contaminated soils. Thus, we transformed a sterile line of poplar Populus alba X P. tremula var. glandulosa with a heavy metal resistance gene, ScYCF1 (yeast cadmium factor 1), which encodes a transporter that sequesters toxic metal(loid)s into the vacuoles of budding yeast, and tested these transgenic plants in soil taken from a closed mine site contaminated with multiple toxic metal(loid)s under greenhouse and field conditions. The YCF1-expressing transgenic poplar plants exhibited enhanced growth, reduced toxicity symptoms, and increased Cd content in the aerial tissue compared to the non-transgenic plants. Furthermore, the plants accumulated increased amounts of Cd, Zn, and Pb in the root, because they could establish an extensive root system in mine tailing soil. These results suggest that the generation of YCF1-expressing transgenic poplar represents the first step towards producing plants for phytoremediation. The YCF1-expressing poplar may be useful for phytostabilization and phytoattenuation, especially in highly contaminated regions, where wild-type plants cannot survive.     

Impact of temperature on juvenile growth and age at first egg-laying of the Pacific reef squid Sepioteuthis lessoniana reared in captivity

Cephalopod mollusks exhibit highly plastic life cycle traits influenced primarily by the interactive effects of food availability, light cycle and temperature, with the latter perhaps the most influential. Hatchlings of the tropical reef squid Sepioteuthis lessoniana were hatched from field-collected eggs in the laboratory and cultured at different temperatures to evaluate the effect of temperature on growth rates. All groups showed rapid, sustained growth rates from hatching to a size of 10–25 g. Beyond this size range, growth was slower and not clearly exponential in form. Growth rate was closely linked to temperature. Squids grown at approximately 27 °C attained a size of 10 g in as little as 45 days at sustained growth rates of 12.2% body weight day⁻¹ (%bw day⁻¹), while squids cultured at 20 °C required almost 100 days to attain the same size at rates of 5.7%bw day⁻¹. At an age of 55 days and approximately 1 g body weight, juvenile squids cultured at 20 °C were able to accelerate growth rates from 5.7%bw day⁻¹ to over 12%bw day⁻¹ when temperature was raised to 27 °C. They maintained this growth rate to a size of about 10 g and an age of at least 75 days post-hatching, indicating that body size and not age is the limiting factor for this rapid post-hatching growth. By comparison, conspecifics cultured near 27 °C from hatching had shifted out of the rapid post-hatching growth phase by day 50 at sizes between 10 and 50 g. The hatchlings from temperate to subtropical Japan had consistently higher growth rates at comparable temperatures than hatchlings from tropical Okinawa. When plotted as growth rate versus temperature, the Japanese group had a clearly higher slope to the relationship than the tropical populations, equivalent to a 2%bw day⁻¹ difference in growth rate at 25 °C. Age at first egg-laying was decreased at higher culture temperatures; however, overall life span was not. Received: 21 February 2000 / Accepted: 6 September 2000     

The annual testosterone profile in cooperatively breeding superb fairy-wrens, Malurus cyaneus, reflects their extreme infidelity

Superb fairy-wrens are cooperatively breeding birds that combine stable, socially monogamous pair bonds and high levels of paternal care, with extreme levels of extra-pair mating and high levels of sexual competition. Our aim was to determine which testosterone correlates would prevail in such a life history that combines features that are conventionally associated with divergent hormone profiles. Unlike the situation in other species with monogamous pair bonds and high levels of paternal care, testosterone was elevated for a very long period of several months. During breeding there was a broad peak in testosterone followed by a gradual decline: this resembles the profile found in polygynous and promiscuous species. We found that three factors correlated with testosterone: development of the sexually selected nuptial plumage, social status and extra-group mating opportunities. Testosterone started increasing months prior to breeding, when the males that are later preferred as extra-group sires develop their nuptial plumage. Although these males did not have higher testosterone levels during breeding, they sustained high testosterone for much longer, and this might lend reliability to this sexual signal. Dominant males in groups had higher testosterone than pair-dwelling males and subordinate helpers. This was not due to differences in age, reproductive capability or mating opportunities, but was presumably associated with the assertion of dominance. In contrast to findings in other species, male testosterone level was not correlated with whether the resident female was fertile or had dependent nestlings. However, testosterone was strongly correlated with the total number of fertile females in the population, and hence with the opportunities for extra-group mating.     

Conservation Applications of Astronaut Photographs of Earth: Tidal-Flat Loss ( Japan), Elephant Effects on Vegetation (Botswana), and Seagrass and Mangrove Monitoring (Australia)

Abstract: National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA) photographs taken by astronauts from low Earth orbit can provide information relevant to conservation biology. This data source is now more accessible because of improvements in digitizing technology, Internet file transfer, and availability of image processing software. We present three examples of conservation-related projects that benefited from the use of astronaut photographs. First, NASA scientists requested that astronauts photograph the area of the controversial Isahaya Bay reclamation project in Japan. Japanese researchers used photographs from before and after the reclamation as a tool for communication with the public about the effects of tidal-flat loss. The newly acquired images and the availability of high-resolution digital images from NASA archives provided timely public information on the observed changes. Second, we digitally classified and analyzed a Space Shuttle photograph of Chobe National Park in Botswana to identify the locations of woodlands affected by elephants. Field validation later confirmed that areas identified on the image showed evidence of elephant damage. Third, we used a summary map from intensive field surveys of seagrasses in Shoalwater Bay, Australia, as reference data for a supervised classification of a digitized photograph taken from orbit. The classification distinguished seagrasses, sediments, and mangroves with accuracy approximating that in studies using other satellite remote-sensing data. Astronaut photographs are in the public domain, and the database of nearly 400,000 photographs from the late 1960s to the present is available at a single searchable location on the Internet (  http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop ). These photographs can be used by conservation biologists as a source of general information about the landscape and for quantitative mapping.     

Atmosphic pollutants study of particles ionic species during high wind speed (>7 m s-1) near Taiwan strait in central Taiwan from 2004 to 2005

This study monitored atmospheric pollutants during high wind speed (> 7 m s⁻¹) at two sampling sites: Taichung Harbor (TH) and Wuci traffic (WT) during March 2004 to January 2005 in central Taiwan. The correlation coefficient (R ²) between TSP, PM_2.5, PM_2.5−10 particle concentration vs. wind speed at the TH and WT sampling site during high wind speed (< 7 m s⁻¹) were also displayed in this study. In addition, the correlation coefficients between TSP, PM_2.5 and PM_2.5−10 of ionic species vs. high wind speed were also observed. The results indicated that the correlation coefficient order was TSP > PM_2.5−10 > PM_2.5 for particle at both sampling sites near Taiwan strait. In addition, the concentration of Cl⁻, NO₃ ⁻, SO₄ ²⁻, NH₄ ⁺, Mg²⁺, Ca²⁺ and Na⁺ were also analyzed in this study.     

Analysis of long-term settlement of municipal solid waste landfills as determined by various settlement estimation methods

In this study, several existing municipal solid waste (MSW) settlement estimation methods are reviewed and applied to analyze the settlement data of nine MSW landfills. Because a biodegradation-related settlement contributes differently to a long-term total settlement depending on the age of landfills, the actual MSW landfill sites are classified into three groups to specifically address the validity of each method in its prediction of a long-term settlement for each age category. Results demonstrate that there are considerable decreases in predicted settlement potentials as fill age increases. Comparisons indicate that the individual estimation methods display a considerable variation in predicting settlements in the fresh MSW landfills. On the other hand, for the old refuse landfills, all of the estimation methods, except the extended soil model, predict low settlement potentials.     

Characteristics of photocatalytic oxidation of toluene, benzene, and their mixture

The investigation of the photocatalytic oxidation (PCO) of multicomponent volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is very important to the application of PCO technology, because there is seldom a single VOC component in indoor air. In this paper, the characteristics of binary indoor VOCs, toluene and benzene, were experimentally studied using a mass transfer based method that we developed. The concentration ranges for toluene and benzene were 4.48-27.4 mg/m3 and 1.82-4.08 mg/m3, respectively. We found the following: (1) the PCO of each individual contaminant studied obeys the unimolecular form of the Langmuir-Hinshelwood (L-H) rate form; (2) the PCO of the binary contaminants follow the competitive adsorption L-H rate form; (3) the reaction-coefficient for PCO of individual contaminants differs from that in the competitive adsorption L-H rate form; and (4) the component impact factor of A to B, put forward in this paper, is a useful parameter describing the influence of A on the reaction coefficient of B, and it was found that the impact factor of toluene (a chemically active component) on benzene (a chemically stable component) is high, and the impact factor of benzene on toluene is low.     

Modified grey model for estimating traffic tunnel air quality

This study compared three forecasting models based on the mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE) of their accuracy in forecasting air pollution in a traffic tunnel: the Grey model (GM), the combination model used four sample point and five sample point prediction with GM (1,1)(GM(1,1)^4 + 5), and the modified grey model (MGM). An MGM was combined using the four points of the original sequence using the original grey prediction GM (1,1) for short-term forecasting. The proposed method cannot only enhance the prediction accuracy of the original grey model, but can also solve the jump data forecasting problem something for which the original grey model is inappropriate. The MAPE was applied to the models, and the MGM found the proposed method to be simple and efficient. The MAPE of MGM, calculated over 3 h of forecasts, were as follows: 10.12 (Upwind), 10.07 (Middle) and 7.68 (Downwind) for CO; 10.79 (Upwind), 6.05 (Middle) and 5.98 (Downwind) for NO _x , and 11.67 (Upwind), 7.32 (Middle) and 4.56 (Downwind) for NMHC. The MGM model results reveal that the combined forecasts can significantly decrease the overall forecasting error. Results of this demonstrate that MGM can accurately forecast air pollution in the Kaohsiung Chung–Cheng Tunnel.